Dumpster diving

Where are the best places to look for discarded treasures? Anybody have any good finds they'd like to share?

Colleges and military bases are always the best!

office depot dumpsters. some stuff may have a crack or rip, but it'll work. I worked at a pizza delivery place next to an Office Depot. We'd park our cars next to their dumpsters out back. I got a new desk for my room, and enough office chairs for a small business. All with minor defects they do, but nothing duct tape and zipties can't fix.

my brother has pulled a ton of stuff from his local strip mall.

the best stuff comes from the store that sells Christmas decorations and then summer patio tables and grills.

The Christmas stuff is always defective Chinese decorations. Like the full-sized santa that waves? One arm doesn't work as somebody just returned it. So they toss it since it is cost prohibitive to send back to China.

He also get junk video DVD games from the local gamestop store. He says they have scratches or freeze up in the middle of the game.

GameboyRMH wrote: Colleges and military bases are always the best!

where do I look on campus for such treasures?

mtn wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote: Colleges and military bases are always the best!

where do I look on campus for such treasures?

No so much where as when. A regular drive through the campus dorm areas as the students are moving out will pay off.

Or any complex heavily populated by college students.

military bases are by far the best... when military moves they have limited weight they can move with out having to pay for it themselves... also add to the fact that many of them are younger and when they get a bounus or whatever they'll go out and buy a new thingie-ma-jigger... instead of selling the old one they'll just set it out (electronics, bikes, sport eqipment ect)

when i was a kid dad found a webber grill... new... hardware was even still in the baggies at the base dump... we used that for years :)

I agree with this thread.

College town apartment complex at the end of May. If you want a small fridge, desk chair, TV, DVD player, or anything like that, jackpot.

agreed. move out is the best time, I always wait until everyone is gone, Frat Village is usually a good place to look.

Note to self: move out the weekend before schools out. Then move out again with stuff thats not mine

Ah, the other mans trash!

I had good luck with the share strip mall dumpster. Xerox place threw out a bunch of old toolboxes full of tools on several occasions. Micrometers, multitesters, screwdrivers etc. Restaurant dumped a bunch of tables and chairs, wire shelving and such. Owner of the frame shop dumps his big stuff from home and I snagged a lawnmower with a broken wheel (self propelled, electric start!!) table saw, and a couple of uninteruptable power supply things for the computer.

The unit that never stayed the same thing for more than 3 months was a treasure trove. Hot Dog Shop closure yielded stailnless steel, aluminum, plexiglass and a box of trash bags.

Insurance company gave me carpet to lay on while outside under the car.

Real estate office/rental management office often coughed up some major appliances.

Wholesale salvage home products place chucks out cabinets with a flaw or 2 all the time.

I often specialize in my dives. I was looking to build some privacy fence....industrial hose place supplied a steady source of 8 foot 1 x 6 and 2 x 4 lumber.

Imagine my glee when I discovered that my buddy had fabbed up a floorplate/shifter mount from an aluminum plate I had fished from a dumpster! It was part of a 2 wheeled hand truck.

Bruce

depends. for food, trader joes throws out everything(i mean everything) an they feed my friend completely(no joke, he hasn't paid for a food stuff in 2 yrs.). einstiens bros. bagels are a good bet too. just go anywhere without a compactor, some no no's include best buy and meijers. as for other things....... the only limit is your willingness for free stuff.

oh yeah, i was pulled over once with a bag of bagels in my car. officer"what the heck is that!?" me "dumpster bagels.". he just walked away, muttering something about kids nowadays.

Foreclosure/set-outs. More furniture than you can shake a stick at.

tuffburn wrote: depends. for food, trader joes throws out everything(i mean everything) an they feed my friend completely(no joke, he hasn't paid for a food stuff in 2 yrs.).

I see you're from Michigan. I think Florida heat and humidity would make eating anything out of grocery dumpsters around here pretty dangerous.

And please, if you dumpster dive, clean up afterwards. No matter how well we clean ours, the next day there will be open garbage bags and debris strewn all over the place. We keep ours locked up, but it doesn't make a difference. This is a big reason why retailers hate divers.

Grainger. There was one across the street from the tow company I worked for. We would get some good stuff from there. The best was a 5 hp ari compressor. The took it back on warrenty and tossed it. We took it and it needed a switch, that they sold us for $11.75. Ten years later and it's still running in the spray booth.

I generally draw the line at dumpster diving for foodstuffs. I'll save that for when I'm one of those homeless nutjobs who sleeps on a sewer grate and goes around ranting about UFOs and mind control. Then it's fair game.

That said, there was that sealed, unopened bottle of Appleton Estate on student-moveout-day a couple years back. One of my better finds.

J

Shoulda been around FM during the move.

I can see an intercooler, a few downpipes, a 2004 Mazdaspeed exhaust (they sound terrible on naturally aspirated cars), a Jackson Racing exhaust, a couple of front subframes, flywheels, a homemade diffuser, a couple of starters, an alternator, at least three intake manifolds - and underneath it all is an engine from an old 626.

I want an old 626 again :(

Margie, Keith made me sad!

John Brown wrote: I want an old 626 again :( Margie, Keith made me sad!

My parents bought a 1981 626 brand new. It proved to be one of the most mechanically durable cars in history. Much better then a lot of the crap that was on the market that year. It even looked good in brown.

Actually, I learned to drive stick on a brown 1980 626. With good front tires and bald rears. Fun car on the roundabout near our house.

This engine was out of one of the fwd versions. It's an F-series engine, and we tried and tried to sell it for $200. Nobody took, we had to move so it went into the bin to get turned into brake rotors or something.

Ooh, there's a Jackson Racing header in that second picture too! You can't see the big crack, but you know it's there.

What's FM doing with 13B parts?

Also:

One of guys took a dead 13B apart and used the rotors for bookends :)